Joseph Bell - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia I am a simple man trying to live a simple life !!!!!! Joseph Bell Born 2 December 1837 (1837-12-02) Died October 4, 1911, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Books Modern Diesel Technolo, Condemned : Criminal Origins: P, The Last Colonial Similar People Arthur Conan Doyle, Bob Geldof, David Raksin, Jo Soares, Bertram Millhauser Dr joseph bell the true story of sherlock holmes history crime biography documentary Sponsored Links Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCSE (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911) was a Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is perhaps best known as an inspiration for the literary character Sherlock Holmes. Dr joseph bell the true story of sherlock holmes full documentary Life and career Bell was the son of Dr Benjamin Bell (1810-1883) and his wife, Cecilia Barbara Craigie, and was a great-grandson of the famous Benjamin Bell, forensic surgeon.

In his instruction, Joseph Bell emphasized the importance of close observation in making a diagnosis. To illustrate this, he would often pick a stranger and, by observing him, deduce his occupation and recent activities. These skills caused him to be considered a pioneer in forensic science (forensic pathology in particular) at a time when science was not yet widely used in criminal investigations. Bell studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and received an MD in 1859. Bell served as personal surgeon to Queen Victoria whenever she visited Scotland. He also published several medical textbooks. Bell was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RSCEd), a Justice of the Peace, and a Deputy Lieutenant. He was elected President of the RSCEd in 1887. Sponsored Links Bell wrote the book Manual of the Operations of Surgery which was published in 1866. Joseph Bell died on 4 October 1911. He was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh alongside his wife, Edith Katherine Erskine Murray, and their son Benjamin, and next to his father's and brother's plots. The grave is midway along the north wall of the northern section to the original cemetery.

Inspiration of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877, and served as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Doyle later went on to write a series of popular stories featuring the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, who Doyle stated was loosely based on Bell and his observant ways. Bell was aware of this inspiration and took some pride in it. According to Irving Wallace (in an essay originally in his book The Fabulous Originals but later republished and updated in his collection The Sunday Gentleman) Bell was involved in several police investigations, mostly in Scotland, such as the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, usually with forensic expert Professor Henry Littlejohn. Dramatisation The BBC television series Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, was a fictionalised account of Doyle's time as Bell's clerk. The series may have exaggerated Bell's criminal investigations, as well as the degree to which Holmes was based on Bell (played by Ian Richardson), and positioned Doyle in the role of a Dr. Watson to Bell's Holmes. The original one-off production – which led to the later series – was released on DVD and VHS in the US in 2003, titled Dr.

Bell and Mr. Doyle – The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes. In 2006, Stone Publishing House published a book, written by historian Dr. Robert Hume, aimed at schoolchildren titled Dr. Joseph Bell – the original Sherlock Holmes. In the Doctor Who episode "Tooth and Claw", the time travelling adventurer known as the Doctor identifies himself as an ex-student of Dr. Bell to Queen Victoria. The comic book Les dossiers du Professeur Bell by Joann Sfar is about the (fictional) supernatural adventures of Dr. Bell. In episode 11, Season 5, of the Fox TV show House M.D., Wilson presents House with Joseph Bell's Manual Of the Operations of Surgery as a Christmas gift. The character of House is based on Holmes, who, as noted, was based in turn on Bell. When House's staff begin to wonder what dark meaning to put to House throwing away the expensive Christmas gift of the book, an amused Wilson begins making up a story about House having a closeted infatuation with a patient named Irene Adler whom he will always consider to be "the one who got away".

Memorial A bronze plaque was erected to Joseph Bell at 2 Melville Crescent, Edinburgh on 8 October 2011, marking the centenary of his death. Organised and funded by The Japan Sherlock Holmes Club, the building at this address, which was his home for his final decades, is now the Japanese Consulate in Edinburgh. The plaque explains Bell's connection to Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. The unveiling ceremony was attended by the several persons involved in the erection of the plaque (principally Mr Takeshi Shimizu) and representatives of various Sherlock Holmes Clubs and Societies. All present gave a short speech on their connection to either Holmes or the project, with a piece from Prof. Owen Dudley Edwards. The plaque was created and cast by Powderhall Bronze of Edinburgh. Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes By Robert McNamara Updated May 31, 2016. Arthur Conan Doyle created one of the world's most famous characters, Sherlock Holmes. But in some ways the Scottish-born author felt trapped by the runaway popularity of the fictional detective. Over the course of a long writing career Conan Doyle wrote other stories and books he believed to be superior to the tales and novels about Holmes.

But the great detective turned into a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, with the reading public clamoring for more plots involving Holmes, his sidekick Watson, and the deductive method. And Conan Doyle, offered great sums of money by publishers, felt compelled to keep turning out stories about the great detective. Early Life of Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Conan Doyle was born May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family's roots were in Ireland , which Arthur's father had left as a young man. The family surname had been Doyle, but as an adult Arthur preferred to use Conan Doyle as his surname. Growing up as an avid reader, young Arthur, a Roman Catholic, attended Jesuit schools and a Jesuit university. continue reading below our video 10 Facts About the Titanic That You Don't Know He attended medical school at Edinburgh University where he met a professor and surgeon, Dr. Joseph Bell, who was a model for Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle noticed how Dr. Bell was able to determine a great many facts about patients by asking seemingly simple questions, and the author later wrote about how Bell's manner had inspired the fictional detective.

Medical Career of Arthur Conan Doyle In the late 1870s Conan Doyle began writing magazine stories, and while pursuing his medical studies he had a yearning for adventure. At the age of 20, in 1880, he signed on to be the ship's surgeon of a whaling vessel headed to Antarctica. After a seven-month voyage he returned to Edinburgh, finished his medical studies, and began the practice of medicine. Conan Doyle continued to pursue writing, and published in various London literary magazines throughout the 1880s . Influenced by a character of Edgar Allan Poe , the French detective M. Dupin, Conan Doyle wished to create his own detective character. Sherlock Holmes Appeared In the Late 1880s The character of Sherlock Holmes first appeared in a story, "A Study in Scarlet ," which Conan Doyle published at the end of 1887 in a magazine, Beeton's Christmas Annual. It was reprinted as a book in 1888. At the same time, Conan Doyle was conducting research for a historical novel, Micah Clarke, which was set in the 17th century.

He seemed to consider that his serious work, and the Sherlock Holmes character merely a challenging diversion to see if he could write a convincing detective story. However, Conan Doyle realized that the growing British magazine market was the perfect place to try an experiment in which a recurring character would turn up in new stories. He approached The Strand magazine with his idea, and in 1891 he began publishing new Sherlock Holmes stories. The magazine stories were a hit in England. The public clamored for them, and the character became a sensation. Illustrations for the stories were drawn by an artist, Sidney Paget, who actually added much to the popular conception of the character. It was Paget who drew Holmes wearing a deerstalker cap and a cape, details not mentioned in the original stories. Arthur Conan Doyle Became Famous With the success of the Holmes stories in The Strand magazine, Conan Doyle was suddenly an extremely famous writer. The magazine wanted more stories, but as the author didn't want to be too associated with the now-famous detective, he demanded an outrageous sum of money, 50 pounds per story. Conan Doyle was stunned when the magazine accepted, and he went on to keep writing about Sherlock Holmes.

While the public was crazy for Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle devised a way to be finished with writing the stories. He killed off the character by having him, and his nemesis Professor Moriarity, die while going over Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Conan Doyle's own mother, when told of the planned story, begged her son not to finish off Sherlock Holmes. When the story in which Holmes died was published in December 1893, the British reading public was outraged. More than 20,000 people canceled their magazine subscriptions. And in London it was reported that businessmen wore mourning crepe on their top hats. Sherlock Holmes Was Revived Arthur Conan Doyle, freed from Sherlock Holmes, wrote other stories, and invented a character named Etienne Gerard, a soldier in Napoleon's army. The Gerard stories were popular, but not nearly as popular as Sherlock Holmes. In 1897 Conan Doyle wrote a play about Holmes, and an actor, William Gillette, became a sensation playing the detective on Broadway in New York City . Gillette added another facet to the character, the famous meerschaum pipe.

A novel about Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, was serialized in The Strand in 1901-02. Conan Doyle got around the death of Holmes by setting the story five years before his demise. However, the demand for Holmes stories was so great that Conan Doyle essentially brought the great detective back to life by explaining that no one had actually seen Holmes go over the falls. The public, happy to have new tales, accepted the explanation. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes until the 1920s. In 1912 he published an adventure novel, The Lost World, about characters who find dinosaurs still living in a remote area of South America. The story of The Lost World has been adapted for film and television a number of times, and also served as an inspiration for such films as King Kong and Jurassic Park. Conan Doyle served as a doctor in a military hospital in South Africa during the Boer War in 1900, and wrote a book defending Britain's actions in the war. For his services he was knighted in 1902, becoming Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The author died in 1930.

The character of Sherlock Holmes, of course, lives on, and appears in films right down to the present day. About: Joseph Bell About: Joseph Bell An Entity of Type : person , from Named Graph : , within Data Space : dbpedia.org Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCSE (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911) was a Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is perhaps best known as an inspiration for the literary character Sherlock Holmes. Property abstract Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCS (Edimburgo 2 de diciembre de 1837 – 4 de octubre de 1911) fue un médico y profesor escocés en el Edinburgh Infirmary de la Universidad de Edimburgo. Fue un precursor de la medicina forense y su método analítico influyó en Arthur Conan Doyle, que lo conoció en 1877 al cursar sus estudios de medicina, a la hora de modelar su famoso personaje de Sherlock Holmes.

Nació en el seno de una familia con precedentes en el campo de la medicina entre los que destacaba Sir Charles Bell, conocido por la descripción de la parálisis de Bell. Bell un hombre de gran energía, poeta aficionado, deportista y aficionado a las aves. Estudió con precisión aspectos como el modo de caminar, el acento, las manos y la indumentaria de una persona y con esta información podía llegar a determinar muchas cosas. Así solía animar a sus alumnos a reconocer a sus pacientes como un zapatero zurdo o como un sargento jubilado que había servido en Barbados mediante la observación precisa del individuo y la deducción lógica. A menudo asombraba tanto al propio paciente como a sus alumnos haciendo afirmaciones de esta índole, a veces incluso antes que el paciente dijera nada. Se cree que el personaje representado en la serie estadounidense House M.D está basado en Joseph, esto concuerda con el carater cinico y malhumorado del personaje y su increible capacidad para diagnosticar casos complejos.

Existe también la suposicion de que el ficticio doctor House es una representacion medica de Sherlock Holmes, así como el Dr. Wilson es análogo al asistente Watson.Bell era consciente de que Doyle lo había tomado como referencia para su obra detectivesca y lo llevaba a gala. Siempre mantuvo interés en su alter ego e incluso prologó uno de los libros de Sherlock Holmes.

(es) جوزيف بيل جوزيف بيل هو محاضر واستاذ أستكلندي شهير , كان بيل يحاضر في الكلية الطبية في جامعة إدنبرة و ذلك خلال القرن التاسع عشر الميلادي , لعل أفضل ما عرف به هو أن شخصية شرلوك هولمزالخيالية مستوحاة من شخصيته , كان جده الأول جراحاً متخصصاً بالطب الشرعي في توجيهاته يشدد بيل على دور الملاحظة الدقيقة في التشخيص , كان بيل قادراً على استنتاج مهنة أي شخص (لم يسبق له معرفته) و ما فعله مؤخراً عن طريق الملاحظة الدقيقة فقط , هذه المهارة أدت إلى اعتباره رائداً في مجال الطب الشرعي , في وقت لم يتسع فيها استخدام العلوم الشرعية في التحقيق الجنائي . التقى آرثر كونان دويل به عام 1877 م و عمل كمساعد له في عيادة إدنبرة الملكية .

لاحقاً بدأ دويل في كتابة سلسلة قصصية عرضت شرلوك هولمز و التي استوحاها كونان دويل من منهج جوزيف بيل في التحليل و الاستنتاج , كان بيل على دراية بذلك و مسروراً به .ووفقا لما قاله إيرفينغ والاس (في كتابه the Fabulous Originals )فقد كان بيل كان ضالعا في عدة تحقيقات للشرطة، ومعظمها في اسكتلندا، مثل لغز Ardlamont من عام 1893 م، وعادة كان برفقة الطبيب الشرعي الخبير البروفيسور هنري ليتل. و من هذه التحقيقات "جاك السفاح" ، فمع أن التحقيق في هذه القضية لم يغلق إلا أن جرائم القتل توقفت بعد سبعة أيام من تسليم بيل أسماء المشتبه بهم للشرطة ، [بحاجة لمصدر]كما خدم بيل الملكة فيكتوريا كلما زارت اسكتلندا. كما نشر عدة كتب طبية.

كان على زمالة الكلية الملكية للجراحين في أدنبرة، قاضي الصلح، و ملازم مفوض .توفي جوزيف بيل في 4 تشرين الأول 1911. دفن في مقبرة دين في ادنبره إلى جانب زوجته، إديث كاثرين إرسكين موراي، وبنيامين ابنهما، وبجوار والده و شقيقه .ظهور في الدراما :سلسلة bbc التلفزيونية Murders rooms :THE Dark beginings of Sherlock Holmes تناولت رواية متخيلة عن الأوقات التي عمل خلالها بيل و دويل معاً , في السلسلة كان كلاً من تحقيق بيل الجنائي و مدى التشابه بين بيل و شخصية هولمز مبالغاً فيه . في الحلقة الحادية عشر من الموسم الخامس مسلسل House M.D إنتاج Fox أهدى ويلسون لهاوس في عيد الميلاد كتاب جوزيف بيل الدليل في العمليات الجراحية .

شخصية هاوس مستوحاة من هولمز و الذي كان بدوره مستوحى من جوزيف بيل.32x28pxبوابة طب32x28pxبوابة تربية32x28pxبوابة إسكتلندا (ar) Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCSE (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911) was a Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is perhaps best known as an inspiration for the literary character Sherlock Holmes. (en) Joseph Bell (* 2. Dezember 1837; † 4. Oktober 1911) war ein schottischer Chirurg, Kinder- und Militärarzt und gilt als Pionier der Forensik. (de) Joseph Bell était un médecin et professeur de médecine écossais. Ses méthodes ont inspiré l'auteur Arthur Conan Doyle. (fr) È rimasto noto per avere ispirato Arthur Conan Doyle (suo allievo e assistente) nella creazione del personaggio di Sherlock Holmes.

(it) ジョセフ・ベル（Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCS、1837年12月2日 – 1911年10月4日）は、19世紀のエディンバラ大学医学校で講師を務めていたスコットランドの医師。ベルは、文学作品の登場人物であるシャーロック・ホームズのモデルとされた人物として知られている。 (ja) Джо́зеф Бе́лл (англ. Joseph Bell; 2 декабря 1837 — 4 октября 1911) — профессор Эдинбургского университета, известный в своё время хирург. Был знаком с Артуром Конан Дойлом, для которого послужил прототипом Шерлока Холмса. (ru) Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (en) Joseph Bell | Baker Street Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Bell was a great-grandson of Benjamin Bell, a forensic surgeon. In his instruction, Joseph Bell emphasized the importance of close observation in making a diagnosis.

To illustrate this, he would often pick a stranger and, by observing him, deduce his occupation and recent activities. These skills caused him to be considered a pioneer in forensic science (forensic pathology in particular) at a time when science was not yet widely used in criminal investigations. Bell studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and received an MD in 1859. Bell served as personal surgeon to Queen Victoria whenever she visited Scotland. He also published several medical textbooks. Bell was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a Justice of the Peace, and a Deputy Lieutenant. Bell wrote the book Manual of the Operations of Surgery, which was published in 1883. [1] Joseph Bell died on 4 October, 1911. He was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh alongside his wife, Edith Katherine Erskine Murray, and their son Benjamin, and next to his father's and brother's plots. Inspiration for Sherlock Holmes Edit sir Arthur Conan Doyle met Bell in 1877, and served as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Doyle later went on to write a series of popular stories featuring the fictional character Sherlock Holmes , who Doyle stated was loosely based on Bell and his observant ways. [2] Bell was aware of this inspiration and took some pride in it. According to Irving Wallace (in an essay originally in his book The Fabulous Originals but later republished and updated in his collection The Sunday Gentleman),[citation needed] Bell was involved in several police investigations, mostly in Scotland, such as the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, usually with forensic expert Professor Henry Littlejohn (surgeon born 1826). Dramatisation Edit The BBC television series Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes was a fictionalised account of Doyle 's time as Bell's clerk. The series may have exaggerated Bell's criminal investigations, as well as the degree to which Holmes was based on Bell (played by Ian Richardson ), and positioned Doyle in the role of a Dr Watson to Bell's Holmes. The original one-off production – which led to the later series – was released on DVD and VHS in the US in 2003, titled Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle – The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes.

In 2006, Stone Publishing House published a book, written by historian Dr Robert Hume, aimed at schoolchildren titled Dr. Joseph Bell – The Original Sherlock Holmes.[citation needed] Memorial Edit A bronze plaque was erected to Joseph Bell at 2 Melville Crescent, Edinburgh on 8 October 2011, marking the centenary of his death. Organised and funded by The Japan Sherlock Holmes Club, the building at this address, which was his home for his final decades, is now the Japanese Consulate in Edinburgh. Who Inspired Sherlock Holmes? Who Inspired Sherlock Holmes? Jump to: navigation , search Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A London-based "consulting detective" whose abilities border on the fantastic, Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases. Creator(s): Dr. Joseph Bell Arthur Conan Doyle said that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations.

However, some years later, Bell wrote in a letter to Conan Doyle: "you are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it.” [1] Sir Henry Littlejohn Sir Henry Littlejohn, lecturer on Forensic Medicine and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, is also cited as a source for Holmes. Littlejohn served as Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health of Edinburgh, providing for Doyle a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime. [2] The Crown Diamond "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" 1921 is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories (56 total) by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes first published Strand Magazine October 1921 - April 1927. "The Mazarin Stone" was written this way because it was adapted from a stage play, "The Crown Diamond", in which Watson hardly appeared. Its adaptation from the theatre also explains why the action in this story is confined to one room. [3] Molly Maguires The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is based on the real life exploits of the Molly Maguires, a 19th century secret society of mainly Irish-American coal miners, [7] and Pinkerton agent James McParland. [8] James McParland A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, infiltrated the Molly Maguires using the alias James McKenna, leading to the downfall of the labor organization. The incident was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear. A Pinkerton agent also appears in a small role in The Adventure of the Red Circle, another Holmes story. [9] Richard Cabell The legend of Richard Cabell is the major inspiration for the Arthur Conan Doyle’s Curse of the Baskervilles. Richard Cabell was a 17th century squire from West Buckfastleigh. According to the legend, Cabell was known to be a very violent individual. Purportedly, he accused his wife with adultery. Her wife fled, but Cabell recaptured and murdered her wife. Her wife’s hound avenged her death and killed Cabell by ripping out Cabell’s throat. In reality, Cabell’s wife wasn’t murdered and even outlived him by 14 years.

[10] Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure Richard Lancelyn Green, the editor of the 1998 Oxford paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named "Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure" in Cassell's Saturday Journal, published in February 1891. [11] Charles Augustus Howell The character of Charles Augustus Milverton was based on a real blackmailer, Charles Augustus Howell. He was an art dealer who preyed upon an unknown number of people, including the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Doyle's literary inspiration often came from his natural interest in crime, and he had no tolerance for predators. Howell died in 1890 under circumstances as strange as any of Doyle's novels: His body was found near a Chelsea public house with his throat posthumously slit, with a ten-shilling coin in his mouth. [12] The Murders in the Rue Morgue Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin is a fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe.

Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), widely considered the first detective fiction story. Poe created the Dupin character before the word detective had been coined. The character laid the groundwork for fictitious detectives to come, including Sherlock Holmes, and established most of the common elements of the detective fiction genre. [13] Monsieur Lecoq Monsieur Lecoq is a novel by the nineteenth-century French detective fiction writer Émile Gaboriau, whom André Gide referred to as “the father of all current detective fiction.”.[1] The novel depicts the first case of Monsieur Lecoq, an energetic young policeman who appears in other novels by Gaboriau. [14] Lecoq is a fictional detective employed by the French Sûreté. The character is one of the pioneers of the genre and a major influence on Sherlock Holmes (who, in A Study in Scarlet, calls him "a miserable bungler"), laying the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective. In French, "Monsieur" is "Mister" and his surname literally means "The Rooster".

[15] References History of Leith, Edinburgh » Joseph Bell History of Leith, Edinburgh Joseph Bell Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCS (2 December 1837 â 4 October 1911) was a famous Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He is perhaps best known as an inspiration for the literary character Sherlock Holmes. He was a great-grandson of Benjamin Bell, a forensic surgeon. In his instruction, Bell emphasized the importance of close observation in making a diagnosis. To illustrate this, he would often pick a stranger and, by observing him, deduce his occupation and recent activities. These skills caused him to be considered a pioneer in forensic science (forensic pathology in particular) at a time when science was not yet widely used in criminal investigations. for more click here Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joseph Bell | Conan Doyle Info Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joseph Bell Home → Sherlock Holmes →Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joseph Bell Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joseph Bell Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Joseph Bell Joseph Bell – Inspiration for Sherlock Holmes Was Sherlock Holmes a real person? Not exactly, but Dr.

Joseph Bell, the man who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes shared many qualities with the famous detective. Conan Doyle met Dr. Bell (pictured here) in 1877 at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Conan Doyle was studying to be a doctor and Bell was one of his professors. Bell was thirty-nine years old when Conan Doyle first attended one of his lectures. He is said to have walked with a jerky kind of a step that communicated great energy. His nose and chin were angular and his eyes twinkled with shrewdness. In addition to being a brilliant doctor, Bell was also an amateur poet, a sportsman and a bird-watcher. By the end of Conan Doyle’s second year Bell had selected him to serve as an assistant in his ward. This gave Conan Doyle the opportunity to view Dr. Bell’s remarkable ability to quickly deduce a great deal about a patient. Dr. Bell observed the way a person moved. The walk of a sailor varied vastly from that of a solider. If he identified a person as a sailor he would look for any tattoos that might assist him in knowing where their travels had taken them.

He trained himself to listen for small differences in his patient’s accents to help him identify where they were from. Bell studied the hands of his patients because calluses or other marks could help him determine their occupation. So while Conan Doyle went on to write about the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, he played Dr. Watson, at least for awhile, to his professor. “In teaching the treatment of disease and accident,” Dr. Bell stated, “all careful teachers have first to show the student how to recognize accurately the case. The recognition depends in great measure on the accurate and rapid appreciation of small points in which the diseased differs from the healthy state. In fact, the student must be taught to observe.

To interest him in this kind of work we teachers find it useful to show the student how much a trained use of the observation can discover in ordinary matters such as the previous history, nationality and occupation of a patient.” Share This Page <a href=' target='_blank'><img src=' border='0' alt='' /></a> Victorian Crimes: Mysteries 2013 Victorian Crimes: Mysteries 2013 By Suzanne Fox | Mar 29, 2013 Only to modern eyes does the late 19th century seem cozy, staid, or secure. The Victorians themselves saw their age much as we do our own: as a time of tumult in which traditions crumbled and startling technological innovations inspired hope and instilled fear. The period saw the emergence of recognizably modern police forces and forensic science, as well as the rise of what we now call the serial killer. It also gave birth to the first true detective fiction, from Dickens’s Bleak House and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White to the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle in the genre. Decades of writers have taken up the detective novel since then, reimagining both the form and the age that produced it.

The similarities and differences between the Victorian era and our own are part of the former’s enduring appeal to both writers and readers. “The Victorian period feels accessible to readers today,” comments Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press. “It’s not that unfamiliar in its social structure. You don’t have to learn a different language or distant history to understand it. Yet there was so much going on, and we’re far enough away from it to enjoy paying it a visit.” The fledgling state of Victorian forensic science is also interesting. “The forensics of the period tilt investigations back toward the heart and the brain—toward human effort rather than scientific process,” says Kate Miciak, editorial director, v-p of Ballantine Bantam Dell. The authors featured below reflect the contrasts of the period they depict.

They take inspiration from literature, history, and geography, and they make use of American and British protagonists, plainspoken and trickier literary styles, early and late Victorian timeframes, moods ranging from cozy to blood-curdling, and every form of detective from titled amateur sleuth to working class “copper.” What they share, along with a mastery of their craft and a fascination with the 19th century, is a capacity to reenvision the period in ways that are historically convincing and fictionally fresh, yet that resonate with today’s concerns. Period literature is a natural source of story for contemporary writers of Victorian mystery. Sherlock Holmes appears in a variety of recent mysteries, most notably those of Laurie R. King, while Arthur Conan Doyle himself partners with the period’s most scandalous poet in Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde mysteries. The series’ sixth installment, Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Goal (Touchstone, May), proves that Brandreth’s Wilde is astute enough to solve a murder from the confines of a cell and clever enough to be entertaining in the process.

Another mystery drawn from Victorian literature, American David Morrell’s Murder as a Fine Art (Mulholland, May), represents a significant and successful shift for a veteran author best known for First Blood, the source of the Rambo films. Reminded of 19th-century author Thomas De Quincey by chance, Morrell found himself fascinated by the man, his work, and his influence on such writers as Poe and Collins. In Morrell’s novel, set in 1854, an elderly De Quincey visits London with his daughter Emily; at the same time, a copycat murderer recreates the Ratcliffe Highway killings. So minutely do the new murders reflect De Quincey’s essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” that he is soon arrested. Revealed through both Emily’s journal and omniscient narration, the plot balances the DeQuinceys’ amateur detection with the work of a fictional plainclothes detective and his ambitious constable. “This is a period when plainclothes detectives and plaster casting of footprints were still innovations,” Morrell explains.

“[My] characters see them through fresh eyes.” Some of the most inventive combinations of literary sources and mystery fiction being written today come from Britain’s Lynn Shepherd. Shepherd’s The Solitary House introduced two Charles Maddoxes—a struggling private detective and his great-uncle, a legendary “thief taker”—amid a cast of characters drawn from Dickens’s Bleak House. Adding the Romantics to the mix, A Fatal Likeness (Delacorte, Aug.) finds the younger Maddox investigating the often sinister secrets of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle. Historical figures such as Claire Clairmont, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and others play a role; the elder Maddox, dimmed by what we now call Alzheimer’s, can offer little assistance, but his hidden case files guide his namesake toward answers that other sources obscure. Like Morrell, Shepherd juxtaposes period documents with omniscient narration, but her narrative tone is confiding, a bit gossipy, and sometimes cheekily modern. The layering of modern voice, Dickensian London, and the Romantic literary past is both complex and convincing, as are Shepherd’s answers to the longstanding literary mysteries that crop up in the novel.

Unlike those of Morrell and Shepherd, Australian writer John Harwood’s latest novel makes no explicit references to writers or literature. As with his previous mystery, The Séance, however, The Asylum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May) draws on the Victorian novel of sensation for both structure and atmosphere. Calling The Woman in White “part of the landscape in which I write,” Harwood opens his novel with a young woman awakening in an asylum. Though known there as Lucy Ashton, she believes herself to be Georgina Ferrars; when the uncle with whom she remembers living is notified of her whereabouts by telegraph, he responds that Georgina Ferrars is with him in London. “My fascination with anomalous perceptions, hallucinations, visitations, troubled or haunted states of mind—not to mention vast, sinister houses—was bound to lead me to an asylum sooner or later,” Harwood says playfully. The book is a psychological puzzle rather than story of detection, and the heroine’s literal and figurative search for self offers the haunting pleasures of a Victorian novel of sensation as well as a rich modern meditation on identity.

Like literature, place is a powerful inspiration for all of the writers featured here, and both British and American mystery authors often set their novels on British soil. “I think that everyone who loves to read was to one degree or another raised on Victorian literature. So much of what we take in with our mother’s milk is Victorian England, when England and London were the center of the universe,” says Charles Finch, an American who has lived in both the U.S. and England. Though his protagonist, Charles Lenox, is a Londoner, last year’s A Death in the Small Hours takes the private detective and member of Parliament, along with his small family, to Everley, the Somerset estate of a beloved relative. There, he finds Frederick Ponsonby planning to pass the estate to a younger relation; meanwhile, the nearby village is threatened by vandalism and murder. Both lyrically and accurately rendered, Finch’s Everley is Edenic. Yet he imagines the British country house less as a haven of privilege than as the hub of a community connected across classes and generations. “I wanted to talk about the social role and responsibilities of the squire,” the author says. “There has always been a squire in this house.

But what I find fascinating in the period are the huge changes afoot. These seismic social changes are what interest me, under the guise of a very proper, staid society.” Lenox returns to London in the upcoming An Old Betrayal (Minotaur, Nov.), in which a new case leads him close to the British royal family. Also centering on London, the books of British writer Anne Perry (beginning with 1979’s The Cater Street Hangman) have done much to popularize Victorian mysteries in the U.S. Like many of the authors here, Perry constructs her novels with an awareness of both historical realities and current events. “My recent plots come right from today’s headlines,” she notes. “People have said to me, ‘I don’t suppose you realize it, but this is right up to date.’ But of course I do realize it—that’s probably why I wrote it.” There are two deadly rapes in her 28th Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel, Midnight at Marble Arch (Ballantine, Apr.). Pitt, an ordinary policeman who has risen to head Britain’s Special Branch, looks into one case, while his friends and family, including his wife Charlotte, unofficially investigate the other.

Character reactions to the sexual crimes—including shame, blame, and frustration at the gap between punishment and justice—feel authentic to their period, yet familiar today. “This was a theme I hadn’t [written about] before, and it’s very pertinent,” Perry comments. “In some ways, not much has changed. But when events are set in a different place or time, we can look at them without feeling as self-conscious.” American writer Alex Grecian’s highly praised 2012 debut, The Yard, was set in London, among a Murder Squad formed after Scotland Yard’s failure to catch Jack the Ripper. The Black Country (Putnam, May) sends The Yard’s Day, Hammersmith, and Kingsley into Britain’s bleak industrial Midlands, where towns literally tremble on a landscape plundered for coal. “I read the journal of a woman who lived in the ‘black country’ during the period. She talked about how the town’s houses were actually sinking into the mine tunnels,” Grecian says. “There were open pits everywhere and children playing right in the mines.

I had to bring my London characters there to see what would happen to them.” Scores of villagers fall ill, a terrifying figure is glimpsed in the woods, and a young girl discovers an eyeball under a tree in Grecian’s fictional Blackhampton—even before the disappearance of a married couple and their toddler prompt local police to summon the Yard. The tale that unfolds pits science and deduction against local superstition, drawing on sources including international history and British folklore; the novel combines the cliffhangers of a serial and the scariness of Gothic horror. American writer Tasha Alexander decided to make her series heroine, Lady Emily Hargreaves, a wellborn Englishwoman. “It’s not difficult to understand why someone who is working in hideous conditions in the East End of Victorian London would want social change. But what about somebody with country houses?” Alexander asks. “From the start, my idea was to take a young woman from the top of society and explore the process in which she develops intellectually [and] begins to crusade for social change.” In researching the travels of her protagonist, Alexander reads the letters and diaries of real Victorian women travelers; these offer the author useful and sometimes surprising guidance.

“We’ve really bought the Edwardian’s view of their stodgy Victorian grandparents. But if you actually start delving into primary sources, you see that they were a lot less dull and fearful than their grandchildren would have us believe.” Since the series’ 2004 debut, Lady Emily has traveled to Vienna and Constantinople, among other places, and married Colin Hargreaves, who investigates sensitive matters for the British Crown. In addition to linking Lady Emily to a wider range of investigations, the relationship allows Alexander to explore new aspects of the Victorian female experience. With her protagonist newly pregnant at the end of last year’s Death in the Floating City, Alexander’s Behind the Shattered Glass (Minotaur, Oct.) will offer new insights, as well as new crimes. Also of note is The Path of the Wicked (Severn/Crème de la Crime, June), the sixth Liberty Lane mystery by British author Gillian Linscott, writing as Caro Peacock. Despite operating in 1840, Lane makes a plausible and appealing female investigator and shows her mettle as she strives to exonerate a young man accused of murdering a governess in Cheltenham.

Though there is no Victorian era in American history, some mystery novels set in late-19th-century U.S. have a recognizably Victorian sensibility. Anne Perry finds a kind of American counterpart in Victoria Thompson, whose enduring Gaslight Mystery series explores the diverse neighborhoods of Manhattan during the period through the crime-solving exploits of midwife Sarah Brandt and police detective Frank Malloy. Like Perry, Thompson excels at finding themes that are both historically accurate and resonant now. Murder in Chelsea (Berkley Prime Crime, May) involves an issue of what we would today call child custody; and Thompson’s next plot hinges on late-19th-century lonely hearts ads, foreshadowing some of the risks of online dating. Lindsay Faye, another American writer evoking 19th-century New York City, has been praised “as an author of rare talent” by Caleb Carr, whose 1994 The Alienist is often credited for ushering in the “golden age” of contemporary historical fiction. After a successful debut novel set in London (see sidebar), Faye moved to 1840s Manhattan in her 2012 The Gods of Gotham.

Its striking sequel, Seven for a Secret (Putnam/Amy Einhorn, Sept.), is again narrated by Timothy Wilde, an Irish ex-bartender and one of New York City’s first “copper star” officers. The latter are a surprisingly small corps of virtually untrained, mostly working-class men charged with keeping a huge and violent city in check. American Kieran Shields, who like Faye names Carr as an inspiration, explores a lesser-known American city with equal distinction. A Study in Revenge (Crown, Jan.) makes evocative use of settings in Portland, Maine (the author’s hometown and a major 19th-century maritime center), as well as other environments from Boston to Mount Katahdin. In both Shield’s widely praised 2012 debut, The Truth of All Things, and A Study in Revenge, Deputy Marshal Archie Lean and former-Pinkerton Perceval Grey explore the distant as well as the recent past. The history of the Salem Witch Trials is integral to the first book’s mystery; Colonial history and alchemical lore are central to A Study in Revenge. Shields’s work brings this discussion of Victorian mysteries full circle, melding vigorously American settings and themes with influences from British detective literature.

Though Lean and Grey echo Doyle’s Holmes and Watson, it’s the differences between the two pairs that best showcase the author’s gifts. The son of a Native American, Grey was raised by his mother’s wealthy white family. He is visibly “other” in a world where dark-skinned men are rarely seen in impeccably tailored suits. “Holmes is very much a product of his society, with a Queen-and-country mentality,” Shields comments. “Grey is an outsider. He’s not truly a part of the culture that he’s working to protect, even though he’s probably smarter and more cultured than most of the people he’s up against, and he’s not entirely comfortable with his identity.” Happily for readers, Grey, like the novels discussed here, is more interesting because he exists at the intersection of contrasting worlds. Suzanne Fox, a Florida writer, teacher, and editor, reviews regularly for Publishers Weekly. YA Victorian-Era Offerings with a Mystery Twist Changelings, freak-show attractions, Emily Dickinson, the daughter of Queen Victoria’s royal surgeon, and a monster catcher’s apprentice are among the diverse characters starring in a handful of YA novels, due this spring or fall, featuring Victorian settings—and a tinge of mystery.

A teenage girl in Victorian London is swept into a world of deception, betrayal, and revenge in Kristin Bailey’s Legacy of the Clockwork Key (S&S/Simon Pulse, Mar.), the first book in a trilogy. After a fire destroys Meg’s home, her fortune, and her future, she rescues from the ashes a tarnished pocket watch that reveals clues about an elite secret society and a dangerous invention. Kieran Larwood’s Freaks (Scholastic/Chicken House, Mar.) introduces a cast of characters born with abnormalities that make them misfits. They spend their nights on public display, trapped in a traveling Victorian sideshow. But by day, they use their various talents to solve the mystery of why London street urchins are disappearing and to protect those who remain. As the apparently mild-mannered daughter of Queen Victoria’s surgeon, the eponymous heroine of Kate Maddison’s The Incredible Charlotte Sycamore (Holiday House, Apr.) faces quite a challenge: she must keep her risky nightly efforts to solve murder mysteries a secret. She swordfights with her best friends, is mauled by apparently rabid dogs, steals medical supplies from the rich to give them to the poor, and saves the queen’s life.

Writing under a pseudonym, historical romance author Kate Bridges makes her YA debut with this steampunk novel. Though set in New England rather than England, Nobody’s Secret (Chronicle, Apr.) by Michaela MacColl features a fictional heroine based on celebrated 18th-century poet Emily Dickinson. When Dickinson meets a mysterious man who refuses to divulge his name, she enjoys a clandestine flirtation with him—until he turns up dead in her family’s pond. She embarks on an investigation into his identity, uncovering her town’s secrets and placing herself in deadly danger in the process. Also due is the trade paperback edition of MacColl’s Prisoners in the Palace: How Princess Victoria Became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel (Chronicle, Mar.). Colleen Gleason’s The Clockwork Scarab: A Stoker & Holmes Novel (Chronicle, Oct.) is the first installment of a series starring two young women: Mina, the niece of Sherlock Holmes, who has inherited his investigative skills; and Evaline, the half-sister of Bram Stoker, who is a hunter of the undead.

When two women disappear in London, the only clue connecting them is an Egyptian clockwork scarab, and Mina and Evaline team up to solve the case. Two fall novels set in Victorian London feature otherworldly creatures. In The Whatnot (Greenwillow, Sept.), Stefan Bachmann’s sequel to The Peculiar, the faeries have been chased out of London, and Pikey Thomas and changeling Bartholomew Kettle follow, piecing together clues and searching for the doorway that will lead them to Bartholomew’s sister Hattie. And How to Catch a Bogle (Harcourt, Sept.) by Catherine Jinks is the first book in a middle-grade trilogy featuring Birdie, an orphan who is an apprentice to a monster catcher. Her job is to lure bogles out of their lairs and she is happy with her lot—until the orphans of London start disappearing.—Sally Lodge Ripping Yarns Jack the Ripper is alive and well in the pages of mystery and crime fiction, 125 years after the Autumn of Terror. The story of the archetypical serial killer exemplifies the old adage about truth being stranger than fiction.

Consider the apparent ritual significance of the murders, which were replete with savage gore—and the butchery that a correspondent to Scotland Yard (who signed himself Jack the Ripper, but whom many believe to have just been a journalist) dubbed the “double event”: having been thwarted in his plan to mutilate Elizabeth Stride, the murderer claimed the life of Catherine Eddowes within the hour, and vented his frustration on her corpse. The Eddowes slaying, committed in a small square, regularly patrolled by a constable on 15-minute rounds, bolstered the notion that the killer managed to somehow turn invisible. And with the identity of the Ripper still unknown (and likely to remain so), armchair theorists have pointed the figure at a who’s who of Victorian England, including Lewis Carroll, the royal physician, and even Queen Victoria’s grandson. Small wonder, then, that many writers continue to be tempted to offer their take on the Ripper. Sherlock Holmes was (again) on the trail in Lyndsay Faye’s Dust & Shadow (Simon & Schuster, 2009). Time travel and H.G.

Wells, first combined with Jack in Karl Alexander’s 1979 Time After Time, are also in the mix of Felix Palma’s The Map of Time (Atria, 2011). And 2015 will see the publication of Peter Straub’s era-shifting Hello Jack (Doubleday), in which contemporary Ripper-like murders prove to be connected with the original crimes. And the appeal of the shadowy figure isn’t restricted to genre regulars. Isabel Allende’s forthcoming Ripper (HarperCollins, 2014), set in the present, features online role-players teaming up to catch a serial killer in a game called Ripper. David Pirie used the Ripper in his Murder Room series featuring Dr. Joseph Bell, the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. He observes that if the killer “had been identified and caught, it seems highly likely much of the uncanny aura of the murders would have been dissipated. The Yorkshire Ripper, who created such a stir in the U.K. some years back is still notorious of course but has nothing of the aura of the first Ripper because when arrested his public persona proved incredibly mundane.

People are in the end people and criminals are not usually epic characters. The original Ripper, if identified, would probably have been mundane too, but as a mystery he remains so much more.” For Lyndsay Faye, it’s not just that the Ripper has never been identified. “His enduring legend has everything to do with the fact that he was a darling of the popular press. Slap Jack the Ripper on a headline and you were instantly raking in the shillings; add a frightening illustration and amplify that to sovereigns. The English have frankly always been riveted by gore. So the conservative press used him to shriek about foreign influence and moral depravity, and the liberal press used him to flog the plight of the poor in the East End.” For Faye, it was “extremely difficult to treat the horrendous details of the crimes fairly, tastefully, without doing a severe disservice to the victims by glossing over their grisly fates.

They didn’t have a choice in the matter and we do—as a female writer especially, it’s a fine line between historical accuracy and the same variety of sordid money-grubbing the Victorian gutter press was reveling in.” French impossible crime master Paul Halter, whose The Red Fog will be published by Locked Room International in late 2013, has a different take. “It’s question of period and décor. Victorian London is a marvelous canvas for crime stories (hansom cabs, gas lamps, fog, badly paved streets, etc.).” Channeling Golden Age greats such as John Dickson Carr, Halter’s Ripper novel emphasizes the miraculous nature of the murderer’s disappearances after the crimes, which for Halter is “perhaps their most fascinating aspect.” Alex Grecian, author of the Murder Squad series, doesn’t “really care who the Ripper was or what his/her agenda was.

The effect of the Ripper on society is what intrigues me.” In The Yard (his 2012 series debut), he dealt with “the morale of the people living in London at the time, the aftermath of the Ripper’s actions and the results, or lack of results, that the police force was faced with.” He understands why people play Guess-the-Ripper, “but figuring out how society’s grown up around the myth of the Ripper is much more fascinating.” Perhaps Straub sums up the rationale for fictional use of the killer best; he notes that “the evocation of Jack the Ripper calls up a wonderful sense of historical solidity: mental graphics that come laden with suspense, terror, mystery, and fascination.”—Lenny Picker The E-book Did It Genre fiction has done very well in the e-book format and mysteries are no exception. Just how important e-books have become to the category can be seen in the latest figures from Bowker Market Research. In the fourth quarter of 2012, e-books accounted for half of all mystery (and detective) units sold, up from 38% in the same period the prior year.

For the full year, e-books accounted for 35% of units sold and 24% of spending, according to Bowker. E-books’ gain were print’s loss of course, with the biggest decline coming in the hardcover format, whose share of units sold fell to 19% in last year’s fourth quarter, from 27% in the comparable period in 2011. Mass market paperbacks—a category generally hit hard by the rise of e-books—fared relatively well, with units holding even between the fourth quarter of 2011 and that of 2012. The increase in e-book units did not translate into a windfall for Amazon. According to Bowker, Amazon’s share of total mystery unit sales actually fell by one percentage point in the final quarter of last year compared to 2011, as the e-tailing giant lost ground to other e-commerce competitors, such as Apple’s iBookstore. B&N also lost ground in the year, with the second-largest bookseller’s unit share falling to 18% from 23%. Independent booksellers and Books-A-Million gained market share 2012, each picking up one percentage point.

The decline in print sales of mystery titles continued into the first quarter of 2013. Data from Nielsen BookScan show that print sales at outlets reporting to the company’s retail & club channel (which includes bookstores and Amazon) fell 20% for the year-to-date period ended March 24 compared to the similar week in 2012. Despite print’s declining share of the market, a lot of mystery titles are still sold in hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback formats. The top-selling mystery book at outlets that report to BookScan in 2012 was the hardcover edition of Janet Evanovich’s Notorious Nineteen, at just under 290,000 copies. A mass market edition of Evanovich’s Explosive Eighteen placed third last year. Of 2012’s top-10 mystery/detective novels in terms of print sales, five were mass market paperbacks, three were hardcover, and two were trade paperback. Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been impossible to kill off, with both the trade paperback and mass market editions making the top 10 last year, helped by the release of the movie.

Bestselling Mystery & Detective Novels in 2012 Rank

Question: 19th century surgeon Dr Joseph Bell was the inspiration for which literary character?
Answer: Sherlock Holmes